What the papers say

Times of IndiaEditorial, May 19 Whichever way you looked at election 2004, it belonged to ... Sonia Gandhi. The Congress president fought the most daunting odds to give her party the kind of victory no one ever imagined ... By all canons of democracy - and decency - she ought to have been sworn in as India's next prime minister ... But by stepping aside to make way for another candidate, Mrs Gandhi has emulated a tradition of renunciation that, ironically, has long been held to be the pinnacle of Indian civilisational thought.

She can rest assured, though, that her stock will go up as much here as internationally. By the same token, those in the [Hindu nationalist] Bharatiya Janata party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh who have spearheaded a hate campaign against her, must know that they have come out of this sordid drama looking like street bullies.

Hindu (India) Editorial, May 19 There will be enormous sympathy and respect for Mrs Gandhi's decision ... [She] seized the high ground not only to make it plain, in her renunciation speech, that "the post of prime minister [has not been] my aim", but that her belated, conspicuously reluctant entry into national politics was to further a cause - "to defend the secular foundations of our nation and the poor of our country ... "

Mrs Gandhi's [decision] cannot be allowed to be seen as an endorsement of the vicious campaign that the [the Hindu nationalist parties] have launched to block and subvert the electoral verdict ... Having made her point, the Italian-born Congress president ... has grown enormously in political and moral stature. The new coalition government that will be led by Manmohan Singh has the opportunity to build on this advantage and get off to a fine start.

Times (UK) Editorial, May 19 [Mrs Gandhi's] decision ... is a well calculated assessment of the political forces lined up against her and an intelligent reading of the present mood within her Congress party ... The sprawling party contains powerful barons who are completely unreconciled to her leadership ... Were she to become prime minister, they would start plotting to unseat her from her first day in office. She could neither rely on their loyalty, nor convince the country that her coalition was stable - an essential prerequisite to the restoration of financial and political calm ...

It is a mark, however, both of her good sense and political skill that she is now putting forward the one man who could unite the fractious party and also reassure the nervous middle classes and outside investors. Mr Singh is the former finance minister widely credited with the first vital moves to open up India's sclerotic economy in 1991 ... He is not tied to any faction or region, and therefore is not seen as a threat by other party stalwarts fearful of having their influence reduced.

Hindustan Times (UK) Editorial, May 19 Mrs Gandhi is now the only person in Indian history to have turned down the post of prime minister not just once but twice. The first time she declined the office, in 1991 [after Rajiv Gandhi, her husband, was assassinated], it was possible to argue that she was in mourning and that she was not a political person. This time around, however, the circumstances are entirely different ...

It is hard to escape the feeling that she has messed up the timing of her announcement. She should have declared that this was her stand right when the results came in ... There will be a temptation now, for some of her most vociferous critics ... to crow and gloat. If Mrs Gandhi had made her intentions clear from the very beginning, her noble, brave and selfless decision would have had a greater impact.

Indian ExpressEditorial, May 19 There were two ways to respond to the campaign her political opponents had mounted against her becoming prime minister. The first would have been to up the ante and disdain to even acknowledge it ... But it would have also provided the BJP and its ... allies with a heavy duty handle to use against her as long as she was in power.

By choosing to 'humbly decline' to take up the prime minister's post, she has played a masterstroke. For one, it allows her to assume the high moral ground and signal that she was by no means enamoured of power for its own sake, but power for the principles she believes in. She has thus neatly disarmed her political opponents of the one weapon they had hoped to use against her.

Nation (Pakistan) Editorial, May 19 Mrs Gandhi's decision not to become prime minister ... is even a bigger surprise than the poll victory itself ... Politically, it is an extremely astute move, for while it allows the BJP to crow, in the short and medium term it takes the wind out of its sails. And it is not as if she loses control of the government itself: she will remain Congress president, and the probable prime ministerial replacements ... lack their own political bases, and will depend on her entirely ...

There are lessons galore for Pakistani politicians ... This episode shows an understanding of the limits of power ... But above all, it shows the maturity of the political system, which it has reached through an uninterrupted process.